[Weekend] Autumn Rears Its Beautiful Head

It's nearing halfway through September (already!) and the Bay Area has finally received one of its signs of upcoming season change: the thunderstorm. It's a rarity in these parts, and waking up to a loud rumble of thunder at four in the morning was actually a welcome change for me. Amusingly enough my first reaction was not of surprise, but that of tradition--someone in my family getting up during an overnight storm to close all the windows. I half expected to hear my mom coming into the living room to shut the two windows and pop into the bedroom to wake us up and make sure we did the same. I sat there yesterday morning, using emmalyon's ticking watch to count the seconds between flashes and rumbles, amused and comforted by nature's meteorological unrest.

Autumn around these parts is subtle, as we don't necessarily get the foliage here. There's a gradual lowering of temperature, the fog stays inland a little longer, the days get shorter (Emm and I will eventually head out to the train stop when it's still dark), and, if it's a wet season, we start getting rain more frequently. Visually it looks the same, only grayer.

And of course, there's the influx of students. There's a middle school up the street from our apartment, and I can hear their bells ringing every now and again when I'm working from home. And when I'm heading home from work, whether taking the underground up to the foot of Market Street or taking the 47 bus, the modes of transportation are filled with young kids heading home or over to the mall to hang out. There's also the changing of the apartments--the moving out of other tenants and moving in of others, mostly students going to the art school down the block.

Tourism? Well, it's starting to die down a bit. We'll still get the occasional influx of people on the weekend brandishing maps on my street corner, trying to figure out how to get to Chinatown without climbing up the hill, but it's nowhere near as busy as it was a month ago, when we couldn't head to our Safeway down the block without bumping into them. Eventually we'll talk ourselves into walking over to Pier 39 again for food and other things, knowing our patience won't be tried as much when we try to navigate the sidewalks.

Then there's the football season. Yes, as a matter of fact I am happy it's here! After years upon years of not really getting into it, I gradually grew to enjoy it, and though I'm out here in California, I'm still a dedicated Patriots fan. I don't necessarily watch all the games--most of the time Emm and I have it on while we're doing other things like writing or knitting or reading or what have you--but it's great background and it's yet another part of why I love this season so much.

We do take roadtrips at this time of the year, of course...as said, we don't really get the foliage, so there's not much to see visually in that respect. However, there's something to be said about apple picking in the quiet valley down in Watsonville, strolling down the cool sidewalks of downtown Santa Rosa, enjoying the views and wines of Napa and Sonoma. The streets are quieter and the highways emptier, but there's still plenty to do and see. Things don't so much close up for the winter here as much as they merely change a bit to suit the season.

To me, the change of season still retains everything I remember about as a kid, as a teen, and as an adult. It's a different kind of enjoyment of life, different from the Frostian New England autumn but retaining that end-of-year winding down. A time to get a bit more serious about future endeavors, hunker down on projects one may currently be working on, become a bit more patient about things. And a time to appreciate life a little more than usual.

[Books] A fifteen letter word for 'cinematic bomb element'

[alexbot3000, this one may amuse you...]

My reading as of late has primarily been focusing on the pile of "read-then-get-rid-of" titles that have been in my collection gathering dust. I'm actually making some good headway, so this means that I'm closer to getting around to reading the newer stuff I pick up. My only problem being that I'm currently halfway through the Lord of the Rings (literally--I just started the second half of The Two Towers), which is taking forever.

So I've been breaking up the slowness by rereading some comic trades I haven't picked up in awhile. I'm currently reading Alex Robinson's Box Office Poison, and y'know, I'd forgotten just how much I enjoyed it the first time out, and how well it still holds up! I usually ignore and forget about most indie comics, as most of them tend to irritate me after awhile, and most of them don't always hold up after a few years (my main complaint being that, like Seinfeld, they were funny and poignant at one point, but are merely irritating and/or unfunny now). BoP, on the other hand, though it's obviously set some time in the 1990s, still works as a story today. Each character has its own dimensional originality--even the secondary characters. And each one changes to some degree--some for the better, some not, but they all change, and that's impressive, especially in the comics field. There's also the fact that the dialogue is realistic, but not overly so. No Bendis chattiness (I realize now that Bendis and Tarantino are in fact the same writer and needs to lay off the caffeine), and very little "aren't-I-funny" smarminess, but real conversations one would have with friends or relatives*. To me as a writer, those are things that stick out for me and make me want to reread these things repeatedly.

(* - In fact, there's a great chapter where Stephen and Jane visit Jane's family for Christmas, and Stephen notices how Jane speaks differently when she's around her sisters...that one scene alone impressed me as a great example of giving depth to a character--in this case, Stephen noticing something like that, and Jane for being that way.)

Of course, there are moments of obscure and self referencing, but to be honest it's never intrusive. Alex's love for the Beatles pops up in an early chapter when Ed and Sherman go to Slagger's for a beer. Tony Consiglio (and Alex himself, actually) pop up as background characters repeatedly. And there are lyric quotes galore throughout. Like I said, though...never intrusive, but if you get the joke, it makes it that much more amusing. Referencing like that is always a double-edged sword when writing, as not everyone will get it, and more often than not it'll fall flat. It's very tricky to do as a writer.

If you haven't read it yet, go do so--it's a great read!

And yeah...alexbot3000? That's why I still love reading your stuff. ;)

[eden cycle] Three

Three more chapters up at edencycle for your enjoyment! I believe I may have forgotten to do a reminder post here a few days ago, so FYI, we're up to Chapter 13. ;)